DEAtH OF FORMER TORy POLItICIAN BORN IN DuNDEE

DUNDEE-born politician Bill Walker, who was deputy chairman of the Scottish Conservative Party from 2000-2002, has died at the age of 88.

Mr Walker, who was MP for Perth and East Perthshire — later Tayside North — from 1979 to 1997, was born William Connell Walker in a tenement i n Blackness Road, the third of eight children, on February 20 1929.

After attending Blackness and Logie schools, he started work at the age of 14 as a message boy at GL Wilson’s department store in Commercial Street. At 15 he joined the Air Training Corps as a cadet, flying gliders at Scone and went solo at 16, just as the war ended.

He joined the RAF at 18 for two years, before being moved to t h e R A F ’s Volunteer Reserve, where he was retained virtually until the end of his life.

Flying, and teaching youngsters to fly, remained a dominant passion and he taught more than 1,000 cadets to fly a glider.

On leaving the RAF, he worked on Dundee Corporation buses then joined Dundee house furnishers Malcolm’s as a trainee. By the mid-1950s, he had risen to be general manager.

He remained closely involved with t he RAF Reserve and Air Cadets and also worked as a glider flying instructor every weekend at No 5 Gliding School, based at then RAF Edzell.

He was then approached to be a senior instructor at the new No 2 Gliding Centre based at Kirton-on-Lindsey in Lincolnshire.

Mr Walker wanted t o become an MP and joined the Conservative candidates’ list in 1963.

In 1968, the Association of Retail Furnishers recruited him to set up a training department and he was then headhunted by the Birmingham family-run furnishing company Lee Longlands as a director.

He was chosen by the Scottish Conservatives to contest Dundee East, held by then SNP leader Gordon Wilson.

He stood unsuccessfully in the second 1974 election, and was then asked to apply for the candidature in Perth and East Perthshire, later Tayside North. In the 1979 election, he won the seat from the Nationalists.

Mr Walker is survived by his widow, Mavis, three daughters — Clova, Fiona and Justine — and six grandchildren.